Chapter 488 A Pappy's Job
"Shit! Run, you fucking idiots!"
Master Sergeant Jose "Tekillya" Cuervo was in a ruined city with the rest of Reaper Team 22. It had started as a nice, quiet little metropolis full of busy little worker bees going about their day, until a supervillain had kidnapped the son of the city's mayor. Reaper Team 22 had been sent in to neutralize the criminal, save the child, and prevent the situation from spiraling out of control and escalating to an absurd level.
Obviously, something had gone wrong.
Tekillya fervently cursed Murphy as he ran at top speed, the shadow of an entire skyscraper surrounding his team. As it turned out, the kidnapper was part of a team of criminals, and one of them had ripped an entire skyscraper off of its foundation and simply thrown it at the hapless reapers. The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via P4pyrusN0v3l.
Naturally, it wouldn't kill them if it hit them. It wouldn't even really cramp their style all that much, much less part their hair on the wrong side, but it would still be embarrassing. After all, who would want to be known for being unable to dodge a building? Tekillya's entire team would get so much shit from the other guys in the barracks once the After Action Review was made public. They already would, having fucked up so spectacularly, but they could at least limit the damage by dodging the building that was rapidly approaching them from the sky.
Then, the entire world froze around them and disintegrated into particles that drifted into the sky and vanished. [Simulation terminated,] the obviously synthesized voice of a VI announced.
Tekillya and the rest of his team looked at each other. "Do you think this means the AAR won't be coming out?" one of them asked.
"Probably not. Supreme Commander Athena will still give us our dressing down," Master Sergeant Cuervo said in a dejected tone.
The team shook their heads and chorused, "No questions, ma'am!"
[Alright then. You have one day to go over the data, then the testing mission cycle will begin. Dismissed!]
"Yes, ma'am!" the reapers shouted with a salute, then left the briefing room and headed back to their team barracks.
"So, first order of business," Tekillya said once they returned to their squad bay. "What should we call this new kit?"
A number of suggestions were thrown out, and one member of the team got thoroughly booed and beaten to a pulp for suggesting "PAP Smear" as the nickname for the new gear. Then the hubbub died down for a few minutes before another member of the team suggested, "Why don't we call it Pappy? My pappy always stood in front of me whenever bad things happened. He shooed away the monster in the closet and the monsters under my bed when I was little, taught me to swim after he saved me from drowning when I fell in the pool... a lot of things, really. My pappy protected me when I was little, and now that we're big, our pappies can't help us anymore. But this one can."
The whole squad bay fell into silence as the men thought back on their lives and their fathers, whether they were present or not, protective or not, decent or not.... Even if their fathers were the most vicious, abusive scum they knew growing up, every single one of them dreamed of having a "pappy" like the one described by their squadmate.
"Well," Tekillya said. "It looks like we have a winner."
The rest of the men nodded, then they all got down to business going through the detailed specs in the file Aron had thrown them earlier.
An hour later, they finished reviewing it, and one of them asked, "So, Master Sergeant... do you think Pappy will protect us from getting skyscrapers thrown at us?"
The squad bay fell into another long silence. This time, though, it was a cold, menacing silence as everyone glared at the person they were about to beat into respawning for bringing up their most recent humiliating shame.